Emilia Clarke Reveals Righteously Feminist, R-Rated Suggestion for How Game of Thrones Should End

Game of Thrones has taken its share of heat over the years for its flagrant use of female nudity. Despite recent efforts to balance the gender scales when it comes to stripping down (led, largely, by Michiel Huisman, a.k.a. new Daario), the show hasn’t been able to shake that slightly exploitative reputation as it heads into Season 6. Even new cast member Ian McShane recently said the show was “only tits and dragons,” while this past weekend S.N.L.took a shot at the show’s taste for toplessness. But in a new interview, Emilia Clarke reveals how the series could flip that dynamic on its head with her fantastic suggestion for an R-rated ending.

Speaking with Glamour, Clarke, it seems, agrees with McShane to an extent, summing up Game of Thrones as “blood, tits, dragons, swearwords.” But, she argues, there’s a feminist spine to the show that’s about “the struggle for power.” Women, she says, “are in on that conversation!” With both Daenerys Targaryen in the East and Cersei Lannister (and more) in the West struggling for more and more control, Clarke is dead-on there.

Clarke goes on to describe how she’s often approached by women in real life who have drawn inspiration from the powerful ascension of her character, and Clarke has her own ideas about how the HBO series should end. “I want to see Daenerys and her three dragons share the throne,” she says with tongue firmly in cheek. “Eat goat they’ve barbecued. And bring back all the pretty boys, get them to take their trousers down, and be like, ‘I’m now the queen of everything! I’d like close-ups of all the boys’ penises, please.’”

Clarke’s fantasy ending echoes a memorable Season 4 encounter between Daenerys and Daario. “I’d like to bring your memory back to Mr. Michiel Huisman and I copulating for the first time which began with me saying, ‘Take off your clothes,’” Clarke reminisces. “And then you got to see his perfect bottom.”

It’s been a while since Clarke herself was nude on-screen—since Season 3, in 2013. Her co-star Oona Chaplinsaid at the time, obliquely, “One of the girls in the show who got her kit off the most in the first couple of seasons now doesn’t at all because she said, ‘I want to be known for my acting not for my breasts.’ ” And in 2015 Clarke herself told The Hollywood Reporter that she turned down Fifty Shades of Grey because she’d “done nudity before and was concerned with being labeled for doing it again.” Clarke conducted her Season 5 bedroom scenes with Huisman behind a modestly draped sheet.

She’s not alone. Star Lena Headey opted to use a body double for her character’s dramatic walk of shame in Season 5. And yet Clarke’s earlier nude scenes still stick with her, and some viewers. Talking about interacting with fans, she says, “There are times with certain dudes where I’m like, ‘You’ve seen my tits. OK, sure, you can have a selfie.’ Awkward!”

But now, Clarke says both she and her fictional counterpart are enjoying a new era of power. “You see her attacked by her brother, raped by her husband, and then going, ‘F**k all of you, I’m gonna rule the world,’” Clarke explains. “That’s where we are now.” Now somebody pass her some barbecued goat, she’s got a kingdom to conquer.